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02 July 2009

Sanford's Victimization by teh Gayz, Palin Infighting, and Glenn Beck

Let's just let this stand alone and appreciate it. Rush Limbaugh claims that Mark Sanford cheated on his wife with a hot piece of Argentina because gay marriage is legal:

“It’s finally happened,” said Rush Limbaugh, conservative radio personality. “America, I’ve been warning you for years that gay marriage would destroy the American family and look… there they are, a husband, wife, and four children — destroyed. When is this going to stop America? When will the liberals be satisfied? When all the marriages break up? This wasn’t Mark Sanford’s fault, this was Ted Kennedy’s fault. Sanford didn’t cheapen the value of marriage, he was victimized by the cheapening of marriage.”

What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party—long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics—keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest survivors in contemporary politics—with a fine appreciation of life’s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor—ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?

Since everybody else is piling on, let me add my own comment to the fray. If you were one of the people who participated in that Vanity Fair hit piece, and we find out your name, you will be a net drag on any national campaign for the rest of your professional career. Not because you helped the Left go after Governor Palin, but because you are an untrustworthy sneak who is dedicated to propping up the elitist system in DC, not fixing it. Any candidate that hires you will have to overcome the base’s natural reluctance to work with a campaign that would hire someone like you.

Finally, Glenn Beck has written a new book. Beck emerged onto the media scene in my hometown of Tampa Bay, Florida, where he started off as a radio host doing pretty standard crap. He then got a show on CNN Headline News, where he basically just did his radio show while pointing at the camera a lot and putting up bad photoshops. And now of course he is at Fox News, having steadily migrated ideologically. Back in the day, he declared that he didn't follow politics. Then on CNN, he was a hawkish libertarian. Now on Fox, he still calls himself a libertarian, but it's that trendy kind of libertarianism that basically is identical with being a neocon but sounds less mainstream.

He's done a lot of unbelievably hackneyed nonsense, including his 9/12 project, which claims to set out the nine values embraced by America immediately after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Among them are "I believe in God and He is the center of my life." Yeah, since of course that directly opposes the mindset of the radical Muslim attackers. If there's one thing we need, it sure is more people who devote their lives (and deaths) to their deity! It seems like Beck's thoughts after 9/11 were pretty much just "Goddamn do I love the Republican party, let me imagine some of their talking points!"

Beck has written a new book called "Common Sense." The fact that Beck has the gall to crib the title of one of the most influential pamphlets in Revolutionary American history is unbelievable. But far worse is the content.

It is almost without exception the most contemptible pile of regurgitated tripe I have ever seen, because it essentially is what Beck thinks is "common sense." His solutions to things are facile and thoughtless. In most cases, it boils down to "spend less" and "tax cuts." What a new tune.